Papuan languages

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The term Papuan languages refers to those languages of the western Pacific which are neither Austronesian nor Australian. That is, the term is defined negatively and does not imply a linguistic relationship.

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The languages

The majority of the Papuan languages are spoken on the island of New Guinea (which is divided between the country of Papua New Guinea and Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Irian Jaya), with a number spoken in the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville Island, and the Solomon Islands to the east, and in Halmahera, Timor, and the Alor archipelago to the west. One Papuan language, Meriam Mir, is spoken within the national borders of Australia, in the eastern Torres Strait. The only Papuan languages with official recognition are those of East Timor.

New Guinea is perhaps the most linguistically diverse region in the world. Besides the Austronesian languages, there are some 800 languages divided into perhaps sixty small language families, which are not obviously related to each other or to anything else, plus a large number of language isolates. Although there has been relatively little study of these Papuan languages compared with the Austronesian languages, there have been three preliminary attempts at large-scale genealogic classification by Joseph Greenberg, Stephen Würm, and Malcolm Ross. The largest family posited for the Papuan region is the Trans-New Guinea phylum, consisting of the majority of Papuan languages and running mainly along the highlands of New Guinea. Since perhaps only a quarter of Papuan languages have been studied in detail, linguists' understanding of the relationships between them will continue to be revised.

Several languages of Flores and nearby islands, and especially the language of Savu Island (also called Savu) are usually thought to be Austronesian, but are reported to have large numbers of non-Austronesian words in their basic vocabulary. It has been suggested that these may originally have been non-Austronesian languages that have since borrowed nearly all of their vocabulary from neighboring Austronesian languages, but no connection with the Papuan languages of Timor or Halmahera has been found.

The languages of the Andaman Islands may be related to some western Papuan languages, but are not themselves covered by the term Papuan.

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Greenberg classification

Joseph Greenberg proposed an "Indo-Pacific" phylum containing the (Northern) Andamanese languages, Papuan languages, and Tasmanian languages, but not Australian Aboriginal languages. It has no equivalent to the Trans-New Guinea phylum. See Indo-Pacific languages for details.

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Würm classification

The most widely used classification of Papuan languages is that of Würm, listed below with the approximate number of languages in each family in parentheses. This scheme is that used by the Ethnologue. It is based on very preliminary work, much of it typological, and Würm himself has stated that he doesn't expect it to hold up well to scrutiny. Other linguists, including William Foley, suggest that many of Würm's phyla are based on areal features and structural similarities, and accept only the lowest levels of his classification, most of which he inherited from prior taxonomies. Foley deconstructs Papuan languages into over sixty small language families, plus a number of isolates.

The main problem with Würm's classification is that he did not take contact-induced change into account. For example, several of the main branches of his Trans-New Guinea (TNG) phylum have no vocabulary in common with other TNG languages, and were classified as TNG because they are similar grammatically. However, there are also many Austronesian languages that are grammatically similar to TNG languages due to the influence of contact and bilingualism. Similarly, several groups which do have vocabulary in common with TNG languages are excluded from the phylum because they do not resemble it grammatically.

Papuan families proposed by Würm (with approximate number of languages)

Two of Würm's isolates have since been linked as the

and since Würm's time another isolate and two languages belonging to a new family have been discovered,

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Ross classification

Malcolm Ross re-evaluated Würm's proposal on purely lexical grounds. That is, he looked at shared vocabulary, and especially shared idiosyncrasies such as English good vs. better. Unfortunately, the poor state of documentation of Papuan languages means that this approach is largely restricted to pronouns. Nonetheless, Ross believes that he has been able to validate much of Würm's classification, albeit with revisions to correct for Würm's partially typological approach. (See Trans-New Guinea languages.)

It has been suggested that the families which appear when comparing pronouns may be due to pronoun borrowing rather than to genealogical relatedness. However, Ross argues that Papuan languages have closed-class pronoun systems, which are resistant to borrowing, and in any case that the massive number of languages with similar pronouns in a family like Trans-New Guinea preclude borrowing as an explanation. Also, he shows that the two cases of alleged pronoun borrowing in New Guinea are simple coincidence, explainable as regular developments from the protolanguages of the families in question: as earlier forms of the languages are reconstructed, their pronouns become less similar, not more. (Ross argues that open-class pronoun systems, where borrowings are common, are found in hierarchical cultures such as those of Southeast Asia and Japan, where pronouns indicate details of relationship and social status rather than simply being grammatical pro-forms as they are in the more egalitarian New Guinea societies.)

Ross has proposed 23 Papuan language families and 9 isolates. However, because of his more stringent criteria, he was not able to find enough data to classify all Papuan languages, especially many isolates which have no close relatives to aid in their classification.

Ross also found that the Lower Mamberamo languages (or at least the Warembori language; he had insufficient data on Pauwi) are Austronesian languages which have been heavily transformed by contact with Papuan languages, much as the Takia language has. The Reef Islands-Santa Cruz family of Würm's East Papuan phylum are a potential 24th family, but the pronouns suggest that they may also be highly divergent Austronesian languages.

Note that while this classification may be more reliable than past attempts, it is based on a single parameter, pronouns, and therefore must remain tentative. Although pronouns are conservative elements in a language, they are both short and utilise a reduced set of the language's phonemic inventory. Both phenomena greatly increase the possibility of chance resemblances, especially when they are not confirmed by lexical similarities.

Papuan families proposed by Ross

Language isolates proposed by Ross (sorted by location)

north Irian:

Sandaun Province:

Sepik River:

  • Taiap language (Gapun), located on what had been an offshore island 4000 BCE

Bismarck Archipelago:

Other

Former isolates classified by Ross:

Unclassified due to lack of data:

Unaccounted for:

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External relations

Several linguists, including Joseph Greenberg and Timother Usher of the Rosetta Project, believe that the Andamanese languages (or at least the Great Andamanese languages) off the coast of Burma are related to the Papuan or West Papuan languages. Stephen Würm stated that the lexical similarities between Great Andamanese and the West Papuan and Timor-Alor families "are quite striking and amount to vitual formal identity [...] in a number of instances", but considered this to be due to a linguistic substratum.

Greenberg also suggested a connection to the Tasmanian languages. However, the Tasmanian peoples were isolated for perhaps 10,000 years, genocide wiped out their languages before much was recorded of them, and few linguists expect that they will ever be linked to another language family.

William Foley (1986) noted lexical similarities between R.M.W. Dixon's 1980 reconstruction of proto-Australian and the languages of the East New Guinea Highlands. He believed that it was naive to expect to find a single Papuan or Australian language family when New Guinea and Australia had been a single landmass for most of their human history, having been separated by the Torres Strait only 8000 years ago, and that a deep reconstruction would likely include languages from both. However, Dixon later abandoned his proto-Australian proposal, and Foley's ideas need to be re-evaluated in light of recent research.

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References

  • Malcom Ross (2005). "Pronouns as a preliminary diagnostic for grouping Papuan languages." In: Andrew Pawley, Robert Attenborough, Robin Hide and Jack Golson, eds, Papuan pasts: cultural, linguistic and biological histories of Papuan-speaking peoples, 15-66. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • William A. Foley (1986). The Papuan Languages of New Guinea. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0521286212
  • 2003 bibliography of Papuan languagesbr:Yezhoù papouek

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